Breaking Protocol
by Arallute
Summary: Han and Leia make an unspoken deal on their way to Bespin: she'll open up to him, he'll keep her nightmares at bay.
1. Chapter 1

Han had just taken the first sip of his nightcap glass of brandy when the screaming started. He exchanged a quick glance with Chewie, grabbed his blaster and raced down the _Falcon's_ corridor to the princess's bunk. He stopped short when he saw her. She was viciously pulling at the bedsheets and yelling incoherently. Chewbacca plowed into Han from behind, then muttered an apology.

"Aw, it's just a nightmare." Relieved, Han lowered his blaster. "Why don't you go to sleep? I'll take care of this."

Chewie considered the writhing princess for a moment before turning to go. Han sat on the bed next to Leia and tried to shake her awake. She swatted his hands away and kicked at him.

"Drop the flowers! Run!"

She's dreaming about killer flowers? Han would have laughed if she didn't look so terrified. "Leia, hey, c'mon. Leia! Wake up!" Since talking at her seemed to be having no effect, Han threw himself across the bed, embraced her and lifted her up. Leia jerked away. Her head slammed into the wall.

 _That_ woke her up. She looked at Han confusedly. "Whoa, Princess," he said in what he hoped was a soothing voice. "It's okay. Just a bad dream." He tentatively stroked the length of her arm, and took her hand in his. He wasn't used to being tender towards her; it felt awkward.

She responded, though, as Leia normally did—with disdain. Turning away from him and dropping his hand, she said formally, "Thank you, Captain. You may go now."

Han rolled his eyes. Impossible woman. "Oh, I'm dismissed? Thank you ever so much, Your Majesty." He jumped up in a huff. That brandy was still waiting for him, a much more receptive companion than this arrogant aristocrat.

"Han!" He ignored her call, and kept walking. She added quietly, "I'm sorry."

There was something about her simple tone that made him stop and turn. She actually sounded contrite. And when he sauntered back to her side, he realized that tears were running silently down her cheeks. Suddenly he felt like an idiot.

"You promised you'd stop calling me that," Leia chided gently, wiping at her eyes with the back of her hand.

"Yeah, well, I thought you weren't going to treat me like a serf anymore." Han sat back down on the edge of the bed.

Leia nodded. "It's just…I just…didn't want you to see me cry." She looked straight at him. "I'm sorry," she repeated.

Unable to recall a time when those words had ever come out of her mouth—or his, for that matter—Han decided it was time to call a he pulled her down onto the bunk, her back against his front. He wrapped his arms around her and breathed into her hair. One of her braids had unraveled and was tickling his nose.

They lay like that, not speaking, for a while. Finally, Han asked her quietly, "You wanna tell me about your dream?"

 _Why is he being so nice to me?_ Leia thought. _And why am I letting him?_ "My home in Aldera had a formal flower garden," she began. "You know, manicured grass, fountains, statues, neat little rows of flowers…." She trailed off. Thinking about Alderaan always made her throat hurt.

"Sounds nice," Han said encouragingly.

"It was. My mother and I used to pick flowers together when I was little. Anyway, in my dream, I was with my mother in that garden. She had a basket. Yellow flowers. I was relaxed, happy to be back home. And then Vader was there. His armor was so black against the green grass…it looked so out of place…and I knew he was there to arrest me. I couldn't hear the avians singing anymore, because his breath mask was drowning out everything. I looked at my mother, tried to tell her to run. But I froze. Vader switched on his lightsaber. The red looked so luminous against the colors of the flowers, and I just stared at that red light and couldn't say anything. Vader raised his saber, aimed it at my mother, so I yelled that the rebel base was on Dantooine, which was a lie, but I was desperate to save her. And Vader looked at me and then just…killed her. Cut off her head."

"Did any of that actually happen?" Han asked carefully.

"He did kill my mother. Just not like that." Leia sighed. "I get a lot of nightmares when I'm being chased by Imps."

"Well, listen. They're not going to get us. We'll get to Bespin, fix the damned hyperdrive, and be back safe at the new base before Vader knows what's going on."

Leia shook her head. "No, he's going to find us. I can feel it." She didn't know how she knew, but sometimes she just knew what was going to happen. She could feel the darkness approaching, like a storm cloud. Like an ocean wave. Like a black swirling cape.

Han sat up on an elbow and looked down at her. "No, he's not going to get us. Look, I promise, okay? I don't make promises very often, but I've never, ever broken one. I promise you, you're going to be fine. He won't find us. Everything will be all right."

Leia graced him with a smile before settling back into her pillow. "Maybe," she said tentatively, "you could stay here until I fall asleep? If you want," she added.

Han went back to his spooning position behind her. "Sure," he said, trying for a nonchalant tone.

* * *

Leia was better rested than she had been since…well, since before Alderaan. She hadn't had any other nightmares, though the nagging sense of dread was still there, deep in her belly. She and Han still bickered all day long, yet she kept coming back to his quarters at night, knocking softly, like an unwanted Kobarian swamp dog seeking refuge. And even if he'd been furious with her during the day, he always let her in. She just slept so much better wrapped up in a Han Solo-shaped blanket, tucked under his arm or sprawled across his chest.

Four days into their new routine, Leia arrived at his quarters, still upset from the spat they'd had about the dinner dishes. "I still think," she said before he'd even completely opened the door, "we should just divide the responsib—"

Han held up a finger. "Stop. I have a new rule."

She lifted an eyebrow. "You don't get to make the rules."

"Fine, we'll form a committee to examine the possibility of the approval of a new rule."

"I am _still_ not a committee."

Han smiled crookedly at her. He really did enjoy their repartee, and he was pretty sure she did too. He thought for a moment. "I have…a proposal for you, then. If you agree."

Placated, Leia's face assumed the attentive expression of a senator prepared for negotiation. "Fire away."

"When you cross this door," Han indicated the entrance to his quarters, "we stop fighting. We forget every stupid thing we said that day, put all our arguments on hold and just play nice with each other."

Leia considered for a moment. "I don't say 'stupid things.' You do sometimes, pretty often, actually, but—"

"You're arguing."

"I am not!"

"Yes, you're being argumentative."

"No, I'm not."

Han crossed his arms and stared at her until she looked away, grinning. "Okay, hotshot, I second the motion. Your bill has passed."

"Great." Han stepped forward and began removing the pins from her plaits. "Could you maybe wear your hair down to bed?"

Leia shrugged. "It gets tangled if it's loose."

"I don't mind."

"And it goes against protocol."

Han lifted his eyebrows. "Protocol?" he echoed.

"Alderaanian ladies never appear in public with their hair down. Especially, uh, royalty."

"Come on, I'm hardly 'the public.' And isn't there something in that protocol manual about princesses sleeping next to smugglers?"

Leia bit her lower lip to hide her smile. "Yeah, that's a good point," she said, surveying the cramped quarters. "My aunts would go supernova if they saw me here with you. So would my mother. So would…well, pretty much the entire court, actually." She stared at him.

Her hair came down.


	2. Chapter 2

The floor is metal but it's not solid. It's a grate, so that blood and vomit and everything else can just roll through it and keep the floor looking Imperial clean. The metal is cold and it's pressing into my cheek. My cheek is going to have red lines across it from that damned grate. And that's really the least of my problems right now, because I can hear His rhythmic breathing again. He's here. His foot is on my back, pushing me down further into the cold steel floor.

"I'm a friend of your father," he cajoles. "He needs you to tell me where the Rebel base is. He wants me to know. Don't you want to please your father?"

"Father wouldn't," I moan. This is a lie. He's lying to me. My father would not be friends with a…man? alien?...who puts his foot on my back and sticks needles in me.

"Tell me where the base is, Leia," he says encouragingly. Nobody calls me Leia. Nobody except my parents, my aunts, Luke and Han. And He is none of these people. Where are those people?

"I want my mother," I whimper. One of the stormtroopers in the cell snickers, looking at his colleague in white. I'm also in white. Seems we're all wearing white to this party, except for Him. Han called the Death Star a "party" during our escape. It was funny at the time, though I didn't smile then. It's still pretty funny.

"Let me in," Vader says. He's pressing on my brain. Not with his foot; with his mind. I push back.

"Get out of my head," I say, trying to sound as haughty as a princess. He cannot invade me like this.

"She's shielded," he says to himself. He sounds surprised. I'm also surprised by this. But I can feel a titanium wall around my body. The door slams shut with a satisfying thud, locking him out. I imagine the wall. Impenetrable. Thick. Steel. Gray, like this cell, like Imperial uniforms. I can feel his hands running along the wall, looking for a way in, trying to open the door. I keep the wall up, the door locked.

He flips me over. Now I'm looking up at the ceiling. The soulless black droid is floating above me. I try to find its eyes. It has none, so I focus on its long needle protruding towards me. Vader lifts me up, one gloved hand under my back. The droid tilts forward, needle aimed at my chest.

Not again. Not twice in an hour. "No, nonono," I cry, thrashing my body as hard as I can. He keeps one hand on my back, and presses his other forearm under my neck, from shoulder to shoulder. The needle pokes my chest at an angle. The droid beeps once, some sort of apology beep, then withdraws and re-aims. It sticks me off center again. I jerk hard away from the droid, and the needle comes out. Blood is trickling down my chest in two spots now.

"Hold still," Vader growls at me. "It'll be easier on you if you hold still."

There is nothing easy about this experience. I'm thrashing around as hard as I can, though I'm getting so tired of moving. I can feel his clenching arms, his frustration. The droid keeps poking me with the needle.

"Sweetheart, it's okay, please wake up."

He's lying again. He can't call me 'sweetheart' any more than he can call me Leia. Vader pulls me tightly against him—his skin is warm, I would never have thought that—allowing the droid to finally plunge the needle into my heart. I shriek. I can feel the serum spreading through the core of my body.

"Princess?" Vader rumbles in that deep bass. "Listen carefully to me now. Your foot is on fire. You're now in great pain. Excruciating pain." I smell the burning flesh before I feel the agony of it. It smells almost pleasant, like some new meat dish Cook might have tried for us. But then my brain registers the piercing feeling in my foot. I am not on Alderaan. Cook is not here. My left foot is burning with fire, my heart is burning with poison, and Vader is still gripping me. I scream again, writhing, a small bird caught in his iron arms.

"Leia, wake up, baby, wake up."

"I am _not_ your baby!" I shout at him. He laughs. How dare he laugh at my agony? My eyes open, wide enough to glare at him. But it's not Vader. It's Han Solo.


	3. Chapter 3

Leia's eyes darted around frantically. She looked at Han without really seeing him. Then she clawed at her chest. "Get it out of me!" she begged him.

"There's nothing there, Leia," Han said softly. "There's no needle, see? You just had a little nightmare."

She kept staring at her heart, pulling desperately at her cotton shirt. "Where's the syringe?"

"There's nothing there," he repeated. "You're fine. It was just a bad dream. You're fine now."

"Is my foot okay?"

"Your foot's fine too. We're on the _Falcon_ , just us two and Chewie. Everything is all right."

Her brown eyes looked into his, finally comprehending. They were sitting up in his bed, the sheets a tangled mess. She nodded. "Hi."

Relieved, he smiled at her. "Hi."

"I had a bad dream," she confided.

"Yeah, you did." He brushed a hand across her forehead, pushing some of the disheveled hair away from her eyes. She fell towards him, exhausted, and wrapped her arms around him. Han leaned back, his head on the pillow, guiding her head to his chest. He kissed her hair, stroked her back, made shushing noises—anything to soothe his princess. Her heart beat furiously against his.

"Were you laughing at me? In my dream, I thought Vader was laughing at me, but it was your laugh."

"Well," he shifted a little, curling her body protectively around him, "I was trying to wake you up, and said 'c'mon, baby,' or something, and you yelled 'I am not your baby.' How you managed to sound so…uptight, I guess…in the middle of being tortured, I don't know. It just struck me as funny. You're so unbelievably opinionated. You'd argue with the devil."

She was silent a moment. "You knew my dream was about torture?"

He pushed the hair off her face again, in order to kiss her forehead. "Well, I thought maybe it was. Do you want to talk about it?"

"No," she said shortly.

"You can tell me later, if you want."

"I know," she said. She paused. "I'm sorry I woke you up again. I don't mean to."

"Yeah, I know," he replied easily. "Don't worry about it." More seriously, he added, "Really, don't worry about it. I'll sleep next to you every single night for the rest of my life if you want me to, if I need to. I don't want you to ever have another nightmare again."

Leia snuggled closer to him. "That might take a while. I have a lot of nightmares."

"I know."

She looked at him, grinning. "Well, we seem to know a lot about each other nowadays. We keep using that sentence."

Han returned the smile and shrugged. "It's a pretty fun game. Besides, we do know each other. We've been stuck on this ship together for, what, a week now? Proximity breeds familiarity."

She lifted her eyebrows mockingly. "Pretty fancy words for two in the morning, hotshot."

He laughed lightly. "I can be smart if I want to."

"Yes, you can," she assured him. Then she confided, "You smell nice. Like soap and your ship, and…something masculine." She buried her nose against his neck.

He winked at her. "My secret weapon," he whispered. She giggled. Sensing that she was finally relaxing, Han asked her, "Are you okay now?"

"Yeah."

"'Cause I'll stay up as long as you need me to."

"I'm all right."

In a confessional mood, he told her, "I hate those nightmares of yours."

"Yeah, me too. But they're better now. I only had two this week."

"That's not exactly a great record."

Leia thought that over. "I'm having trouble sleeping now because Vader's after us. His ship is out there somewhere, tracking ours."

"I know," Han said, returning to their new verbal game. "But I promise you, he won't get us."

"He scares the hell out of me," Leia whispered.

"I know that."

"I can't go through that again. The imprisonment and the…I can't take it again."

"I know that, too. You won't have to. I won't let him get you." Han didn't mean to sound like a sappy holonovel character, but he meant it. "I'll protect you."

Now it was Leia's turn to say "I know." She lifted her head to regard him, then kissed him gently on the lips. "I know you flew through an asteroid field so that I wouldn't get captured."

"Well," he hedged, "I didn't want _me_ to get captured, either. And I wanted to impress you with my great flying."

He glanced at her. She was looking at him appraisingly, eyes narrowed. "Right," she said. _Yeah, she knows me,_ Han thought. _Knows me well enough to hear when I'm full of crap_.

Leia smiled, snuggled against him and sighed contentedly. "I think I can sleep now."

"Sweet dreams."


End file.
